Blackbeard

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Depiction of Blackbeard in a 1736 history book

Edward Teach , also Thatch , Thack (* probably around 1680 in Bristol , Kingdom of England , † November 22, 1718 in the Province of North Carolina ) was a British pirate who was known worldwide as Blackbeard . He was mainly active in the Northwest Atlantic in the area of ​​the American east coast and the Bahamas . From the " Boston News-Letter" , the only daily newspaper of the English colonies in North America at the time , it was presumably wrongly handed down with the name Edward Teach . Blackbeard was, according to his prisoner Henry Bostock, "a tall spare man with a very black beard which he wore very long". To this day he is considered one of the most famous English pirates in the world. In contrast to his martial appearance during boarding and the official British propaganda, there is no known case in which seafarers of angry ships would have actually died, apart from his last stand against the Royal Navy .

Life

Little is known about his early life. He is mentioned by name for the first time in writing in August 1717. Presumably he was in 1680 in Bristol ( England born). He began his career as a sailor on ships that set sail from Jamaica during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714) . The captains of these ships had official letters of secrecy which authorized them to hijack enemy ships and to steal booty in the name of the British Crown.

Many privateers, however, carried on with their lucrative business after 1714 without permission from the Crown. Blackbeard served aboard a Jamaican ship under the command of pirate Benjamin Hornigold during this time . In August 1717 he took over command of the sloop Revenge for the first time , which had previously been commanded by Stede Bonnet , the 29-year-old son of a wealthy sugar cane planter from Barbados . Stede Bonnet had this sloop built and hired a crew of 126 to lead a life as a pirate, but soon came across a Spanish warship, which he escaped with a lot of luck, losing a third of his crew and being seriously wounded himself.

Captain "Blackbeard"

In the first three weeks of October 1717, he attacked Chesapeake Bay , Philadelphia, and New York , never staying in one place for more than two days. During this time he captured at least 15 ships, which suddenly made him the most feared pirate on the American east coast. When the military authorities went to look for him, he was already on the way to the eastern Caribbean with his ship Revenge and two angry prize ships .

The ship Queen Anne's Revenge

There he brought up the 250-ton French slave transport ship La Concorde under Captain Pierre Dosset on November 17, 1717 . It was unable to defend itself as 16 men of the crew had previously died of scurvy and bloody discharge (from scurvy) and the rest of the crew were very weak. In addition, many of the 40 cannon slots were unoccupied to make more space for the 516 chained slaves. Of the 455 slaves still alive at the time of the capture, Blackbeard kept 61, the remaining 394 he left to Captain Pierre Dosset, who then sold them to Martinique . Blackbeard took over La Concorde , converted it for his own purposes, and named it Queen Anne's Revenge . Slave transport ships were well suited as pirate ships because they were big, fast, and well armed.

Blackbeard had its headquarters in the Bahamas and in the area of ​​the British colony of Carolina . The governor of North Carolina , Charles Eden , took booty from Blackbeard; In return, he granted him unofficial protection and an official pardon. After a few weeks, however, Blackbeard returned to piracy. It is controversial whether he had squandered his fortune and wanted to improve his financial situation or whether, after many years at sea, life on land was simply boring for him. The attacks increased in the period that followed.

He received the name "Blackbeard" because of his thick black beard . Blackbeard, who showed himself hung with several blades, knives and pistols, was best known for the burning fuses he used to tie into his long beard before a battle. This “devilish” appearance, which he cultivated himself, has made him the embodiment of the intrepid pirate. The fact that his appearance also established his reputation as a particularly cruel pirate has led many a merchant ship captain to surrender without resistance.

Although Blackbeard's appearance and demeanor made him fearful, he wasn't all about violence. He especially liked to hijack smaller ships without even firing a cannon. This habit ultimately became his undoing.

Loss to Maynard and death

Blackbeard in action with Robert Maynard. Painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris.

On the occasion of the siege of the port of Charleston , South Carolina , in May 1718, when Blackbeard, heavily addicted to drugs and alcohol, only demanded a box of laudanum worth only $ 600 and medicine for his crew, decided the Governor of Virginia , Alexander Spotswood , the sending of two warships under the command of lieutenant of the Royal Navy Robert Maynard to Thatch arrest or kill.

The Royal Navy was waiting for him with two small sloops at Ocracoke Inlet . The ships, the Ranger and the Jane , were merchant ships hired especially for this action, which were temporarily given the suffix HMS (His Majesty's Ship); 56 additional crew members from the HMS Pearl and the HMS Lyme , who were also involved in the action, hid below deck . Since the Rangers and the Jane obviously had no cannons on board, Blackbeard decided to board the ships. As Blackbeard's men tried to board the enemy ships, Maynard stamped his foot on the planks. This was the signal for the men who had "loaded" the two ships instead of the cannons to storm on deck. Blackbeard was surprised by the attack and his men were outnumbered. Blackbeard died of blood loss from pistol shots and blows; Five gunshot wounds and twenty cuts were found on his body.

Blackbeard's head on Maynard's ship

Blackbeard was beheaded and his head hung on the bowsprit of Maynard's sloop until the pirate hunters returned to Virginia.

Legend has it that Blackbeard's body swam several more laps around the ship before it sank to the sea floor.

Romanticizing legends made Blackbeard the subject of novels, films and reports. His suspected ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge , was discovered near Beaufort , North Carolina in 1996 and became part of a tourist attraction.

Political complications

Governor Spotswood's motivations for bringing up Blackbeard are described in Captain Charles Johnson's General History of the Most Notorious Pyrates ; the second edition of 1726 used a particularly sharp tone. According to this, Spotswood had in no way righteously "lost patience", but clearly acted illegally. As governor of Virginia, he was not authorized to intervene in North Carolina . Although he can be credited with the fact that he probably feared and wanted to prevent an alliance between Blackbeard and the pirate Charles Vane , there is no legal basis for his intervention, especially since Blackbeard could not be officially accused of an attack in Virginia at this time.

One theory for Spotswood's actions is based on his domestic political difficulties in Virginia, which were particularly related to the growing influence of the settlers around Philip Ludwell the Younger. What speaks particularly hard against Spotswood in retrospect are his attempts to defame the Governor of North Carolina, Charles Eden, with which he tried to justify his own intervention (i.e. the arrest of the surviving pirates and, above all, the confiscation of all of the pirates' possessions). Spotswood accused Eden and one of his employees, Tobias Knight, of having made common cause with Blackbeard and of being consistently corrupt. This dispute dragged on for years and eventually led to Eden's rehabilitation and Spotswood's discharge from service.

Other sources cite general quarrels with the Virginia Council and its prominent member James Blair as the reason for the end of Spotswood's governorship .

Films, music, games

The pirate flag of Blackbeard

Even in the silent film era, the character of Blackbeard appeared in several film adaptations, partly as a supporting role, partly as the main character. The 1968 Disney film Käpt'n Blackbeard's Spuk-Kaschemme only represents an embellished, child-friendly version of his character. In the children's film Jimmy and the Pirates ( The Boy and the Pirates , 1960) by director Bert I. Gordon , Blackbeard is ( Murvyn Vye ) more of a villain, but still pretty "tame". Blackbeard, played by Thomas Gomez , appears as a supporting character in the film The Pirate Queen . In the Japanese manga or anime One Piece there is the character Marshall D. Teach a pirate who bears the name "Blackbeard".

DVDs

  • Blackbeard - The true curse of the Caribbean. Everything about the real predators of the seas. Docu-drama. Order number 4006448 75388 7
  • Pirates of the Caribbean-on stranger Tides
  • Käpt'n Blackbeard's Spuk-Kaschemme (Blackbeard's Ghost), Disney film with Peter Ustinov as Blackbeard

Trivia

  • In the fifth season of the cartoon series The Simpsons , Blackbeard appears along with other "damned" such as John Wilkes Booth , John Dillinger , Lizzie Borden and Benedict Arnold as a juror in a trial of the devil against Homer Simpson .
  • In the youth book Percy Jackson - Under the Bane of the Cyclops , Blackbeard appears as the half-mortal son of the god of war Ares . He was transformed into a guinea pig by the sorceress Kirke over centuries and is accidentally freed in the course of the plot. While Blackbeard and his men are ravaging Kirkes Island, the hero of the novel Percy Jackson hijacks Queen Anne's Revenge and uses it to travel on.
  • For the Japanese manga and anime " One Piece " there are several characters that are based on his names. B. Edward "Whitebeard" Newgate, Marshall D. Teach or Blackbeard, Brownbeard and Thatch, who is one of the commanders of Whitebeard and who was killed by Teach.
  • In the youth book series " Die Drei ??? , Blackbeard is mentioned in the episode The Super Parrot . The parrot Blacky quotes the sentence:" I am Blackbeard the pirate! I buried my treasure in the dark of night, where the dead keep watch forever. Johoo - and a bottle of rum! "
  • Even though a separate film was dedicated to him with "Pirates of the Caribbean - On Stranger Tides", you can already see his flag in " Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End ". There are also flags from other famous pirates, such as B. from "Calico Jack" Rackham (flag of the Black Pearl ).

literature

Web links

Commons : Blackbeard  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Blackbeard | Biography & Facts. Retrieved June 13, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Colin Woodard: The Last Days of Blackbeard. Smithsonian Magazine February 2014, February 2014, accessed January 26, 2014 .
  3. ↑ Horrible Histories - Blackbeard song on YouTube
personal data
SURNAME Blackbeard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thatch, Edward; Teach, Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English pirate
DATE OF BIRTH around 1680
PLACE OF BIRTH Bristol , UK
DATE OF DEATH November 22, 1718
Place of death Province of North Carolina